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What ramifications and when? The recognition of Jerusalem as the natural capital for the State of Israel by US President Donald J. Trump was promised by the buffoonish steward of the empire. Delivering on it was not necessarily expected – US presidents, keen on courting pro-Israeli groups, had been promising to do so for years.

Overthrowing the shackles of convention is something Trump believes is a valuable substitute for good sense. Ruffle feathers, dirty assumptions, and hope that it catches. One such convention is the steadfast refusal on the part of states to recognise Jerusalem …

Pope Francis lost a historical opportunity to truly set his legacy apart from previous popes. Alas, for him, too, political expediency trumped all else. In his visit to Burma (Myanmar) on November 27, he refrained from using the word ‘Rohingya.’

But what’s in a name?

In our frenzied attempts at understanding and articulating the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma, we often, perhaps inadvertently, ignore the heart of the matter: The struggle of the Rohingya is essentially a fight for identity.

Burma’s Buddhist majority and its representatives, including the powerful military and the country’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, …

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

— (Anonymous protest poem from the 17th century)

In 1762 Jean Jacques Rousseau published his book, The Social Contract, in which he wrote, “In Greece, all that the populace had to do, it did for itself; it was constantly assembled in the public square.” Rousseau was well aware of the importance of public spaces when it came to political change. Indeed, the storming of the Bastille on 14 …

Introduction

Honduras is in crisis. The national election took place on Sunday 26 November. Results posted that night showed the challenger Salvador Nasralla with a 5% lead with 57% of the votes tallied.

Then strange things began to happen. After midnight on election night, TSE stopped posting updates and effectively shut down for the next 36 hours. The president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), David Matamoros Batson, said they had received 13,000 tally sheets but were missing 6,000 from the total. With just over 18,000 total, this does not quite add up.  Then two hours later, Matamoros increased the number of …

Major changes are roiling the states, societies and ruling classes of the biggest industrial economies, oil regimes and military complexes.

China is re-allocating its economic wealth toward building the most extensive modern infrastructure system in history, linking four continents.

Saudi Arabia is transferring a trillion dollars of pillage from princes to princes, from old business parasites to up-to-date versions, from austere desert mirages to fantasies of new …

A ban by Israel on herding black goats – on the pretext they cause environmental damage – is to be repealed after nearly seven decades of enforcement that has decimated the pastoral traditions of Palestinian communities.

The Israeli government appears to have finally conceded that, in an age of climate change, the threat of forest fires to Israeli communities is rapidly growing in the goats’ absence.

The goats traditionally cleared undergrowth, which has become a tinderbox as Israel experiences ever longer and hotter summer droughts. Exactly a year ago, Israel was hit by more than 1,500 …

Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams—a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told—sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression.

— Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, 1964

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.

— Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 1843

The accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against celebrity (mostly Hollywood) men by women who, mostly, …

There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations

…

On November 18, just days before the 50th anniversary of United Nations Resolution 242, the US State Department took its first step towards severing its ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

The timing of this decision could not be any more profound.

The first formal contact between the US and the PLO occurred in mid-December, 1988, when US Ambassador to Tunisia, Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., picked up the phone to call the PLO headquarters in Tunis to schedule formal talks.

Palestinian PLO officials were ‘elated’ by the fact that the US made the first move, as reported by the New York …

Theatre, hysterics, denunciations.  No tight, orderly and sterile space could ever entirely contain those dark characters with lengthy butcher’s bills and blood soaked attributes.  Screams accompanied accusations; words to make all blush were shouted at witnesses, lawyers and judges.

In the sanguinary mess of attack, counter-attack and retribution, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was meant to rise, glinting above the squalor, peering over with a sort of moral responsibility.  Its effects after it closes on December 31 this year will be debated for decades, leaving perhaps the lawyers content that something was done to bring acts of conflict …